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THE SOLEMNITY OF ALL SAINTS
Leave a CommentIt is said that the experience of the extended family is not all that common today. Many children are being raised in single-parent households. Those growing up with both parents often have little or no experience of their relatives who live in other parts of the country or the world. In the consciousness of most youngsters the day will dawn when they become aware of a desire to know their story. From where did they come? Who were their ancestors? What were their stories? Something about the human condition demands context. There is an innate sense that no man is an island. No woman is, either.
That may be why we celebrate the Solemnity of All Saints, so that we can know the stories of our ancestors in the faith, and knowing the stories, be stronger in our desire to be their imitators. After all, every saint became one in exactly the same way. Each one imitated Christ. Isn’t it odd that no two saints have matching stories? Each one is unique.
Schoolchildren often times as part of this celebration of All Saints will be encouraged to come to Mass in costume, dressed like the saints whose names they bear or like saints they greatly admire. It is a particular blessing if, as part of the preparation for the children’s celebration, they research or are told the story of the saints whose costumes they will be wearing.
What is the danger in this celebration? The danger is that too ethereal a picture will be painted resulting in the saints seeming distant, remote, and only accidentally human. Who can be like that? Who would want to be like that? The fact of the matter is the saints are our brothers and sisters in the faith. They are flesh and blood as we are. They knew what it meant to struggle with faith, to experience temptation and even sin, and to doubt. The struggle is an important part of their stories, just as our struggles will one day be important parts of our stories. Of course they are saints because they continued on The Way to the very end. One day, please God, so will we be if we do the same.
Don’t miss the leads in the first reading from the Book of Revelation. The writer recounts a vision into glory. 144, 000 from every tribe of Israel stand around the throne of God. Don’t make the mistake that some fundamentalists have of thinking that that number exhausts the count of those who will make it to heaven. That is not the point. In the writer’s mind the number is huge, limitless really, representing those from the New Israel caught up in glory. Then later in the reading, notice those in white robes, those who have washed their robes and made them white in the Blood of the Lamb. These are the baptized that entered the Waters to die to sin and to everything that is not of Christ, to rise from those waters reborn to live Christ’s own life. And they were faithful to the end and have received the reward for their labors in Christ.
If there is a verse of Scripture that should be committed to memory and repeated like a mantra it is the verse from the second reading from the First Letter of John. Beloved we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. If that is too long, stick to the first part and say it over and over again, especially in times of difficulty and trial. Beloved we are God’s children now. Or if the situation becomes desperate for you, it’s okay to put it in the singular. It remains true. I am God’s child now.
I had the privilege of visiting Uganda and while there of visiting the place where the Ugandan Martyrs died. I read the stories of the 23 young men, some newly baptized, some still catechumens, and of the gruesome, torturous, slow and agonizing deaths that one by one, in isolation, they died. Read their stories for yourself if you are curious about the details. My point in mentioning them here is that to a person, each one sang the praises of Jesus and the Father, convinced of where they were going, as each one slowly breathed his last. How can anyone do that? Only by being convinced that they had washed their robes white in the Blood of the Lamb and are God’s children now. And there was not a doubt in their minds about what they would become.
Not every person is called to a martyr’s death. That is not the only path to sainthood. On the other hand, you never know. I always remember St. Thomas More’s words to console his wife while he was in confinement in the Tower of London: This is not the stuff of which martyrs are made. This is the same man who, as he knelt at the block and as he lifted his beard over it asked the man about to behead him to be mindful of the beard since it had no part in the treason. Who can do that? Only one who is convinced that s/he is God’s child now. Only one who is convinced that God’s love is unconditional and forever.
No Feast or Solemnity is celebrated just so that we can look back and be nostalgic about the past. We gather to celebrate Eucharist, the word means to give thanks, and to remember, which in this context means to make present. We enter into Mystery to be caught up and transformed in the ongoing process of conversion, of dying with Jesus and rising to live in his resurrection. And we celebrate that we might be sent with thankful hearts to continue the tradition.
It has been said that the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew’s Gospel is the Magna Carta of the New Testament. Or, if you prefer, the Constitution of the New Way. Jesus preached The Sermon on the Mount, seated as one with authority and as the new Moses, the new Law Giver.
Twice-told tales have a way of becoming familiar and, therefore, lessening their impact. You are not likely to gasp as the words of the Beatitudes wash over you. In the midst of the Assembly standing to hear the proclamation there probably won’t be many who will be in jaw-dropping amazement wondering if s/he heard what s/he thought s/he heard. There may even be many who know the Beatitudes by heart. I hate to sound like a naysayer, but if that dulls the impact, it is not for the good. The fact is that all those conditions we think of as deplorable are lauded in the Beatitudes. Blessed are the poor. Blessed are those mourning. Blessed are the meek. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for righteousness. These conditions are blessed because they create in the sufferer a longing that only God can satisfy, an emptiness that only Christ can fill. They are conditions that look to heaven for deliverance and forge a desire for the coming of God’s reign of justice and peace. These blessed statements apply to those who are powerless in their circumstances. The remaining speak to those with power.
Blessed are the merciful. Blessed are the clean of heart. Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness. In the midst of these positions of power are those with clean hearts. What’s that all about? Much more than chastity, which may be included here, the clean of heart are those who are single minded in their purpose, untainted by those values common in the world; they are those who do not lust after position, power, or prestige, those who do not give free rein to their tempers even if their tempers are short, those who are willing to imitate Christ in the pouring out of self to lift up the broken hearted, to give of their plenty that the poor might have something to eat and a place of shelter at day’s end, to work for justice and peace, to reverence the dignity of every living person and so condemn the unjust taking of any human being’s life, to create the bonds of love that bring about the realization of the human family.
Just when you are beginning to relax and foster images of all those who can do something about the evils in our times and others’ sufferings and admitting to their being blessed, Jesus turns from talking about them and addresses you. Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you falsely because of me.
The challenge before us is to take the Gospel seriously and to live as members of the Body of Christ. Just as quickly as the proverbial blink of an eye, each one of us has been mandated to be merciful, clean of heart, a peacemaker. We’re urged to identify with the poor, those who mourn, the meek, and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. We’re blessed only to the extent that we imitate Jesus so that our lives make uncomfortable those who exploit and demean others, those who deny the dignity of even the most abject, those who practice sexism, racism, or any of the other isms that debase and dehumanize. Those kinds of witnesses down through our Church’s history often died martyrs’ deaths. And so might we if we are faithful to the calling. We address those who have gone before us as saints and celebrate them today. One day, if we are faithful to the end and witness as they did, we will be in their number and the Solemnity of All Saints will be ours as well.
Sincerely,
Didymus
